The summer I came back from Bahrain I was on sensory overload. Suddenly, after 10 months of living in a place I describe to people as “Mars” (think red desert with not much vegetation), I was suddenly back in my beloved Colorado. I could hardly handle being surrounded by my mother’s gorgeous flowers, and God’s breath-taking mountains, and the wonderful, refreshing, mountain air. I have never taken so many pictures of my mother’s garden, or stared so hungrily at the mountains that a few years for I had taken for granted. And the air! The fresh, clean, clear, crisp, mountain air! If you’ve never smelt it, you don’t know what you’re missing. But I guarantee it’s a smell you will encounter often in Heaven. I’m pretty sure the smell that accompanies a Colorado mountain morning is God’s cologne – the stuff He puts on just to impress you.

But the thing is, the summer before, I had no idea of the wonder and majesty that surrounded me. I spent that summer in Colorado too, but I did not take a hundred pictures of my mother’s flowers. I did not stop dead in my tracks after stepping outside in the morning, just to soak in the wonderful air. My spirit did not lift in joy when driving into the mountains. I didn’t know what I had. I didn’t know the glory, wonder, majesty that I had been given to me.

Unfortunately, over the years since then, that wonder has faded a bit. But I can still remember that summer. And I wonder how many OTHER things I take for granted in my life. Just how blessed I was growing up. How many friends I’m not near enough thankful for. How very easy and convenient our lives are today. How very different my life would be if it weren’t for God, for Jesus and what His amazing, loving sacrifice did for me. For the air I breathe.

Like the air that surrounds me that I don’t think about breathing in and out, I am surrounded God’s blessings. And I take them for granted. Honestly, I often EXPECT them, and get frustrated when I don’t get what I want. How ungrateful, how ugly, is that?

What are you immersed in that you have forgotten to be grateful for recently? When was the last time you asked God to open your eyes for all the blessings surrounding you? How many blessings can you name? What blessings do you expect to receive?